The aim of this study was to investigate how intra-duodenal infusions of fatty acids (FA) affect appetite-related gut peptides such as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and ghrelin in sheep. We hypothesized that these peptides can be highly reactive to unsaturated long-chain FA, because they are well known to decrease DMI. Four ewes were fitted with a duodenal cannula and a jugular vein catheter for a 6-h duodenal infusion of the nine FA (C8:0, C10:0, C12:0, C14:0, C16:0, C18:0, C18:1, C18:2, C18:3) and water (control)...

The isolated microbial Alcaligenes sp. S3 from the agricultural field was used for the biodegradation of synthetic wastewater containing atrazine. This study was conducted in an alternating aerobic-anoxic lab scale pilot plant. The performance of continuously operated pilot plant was evaluated in three different phases with varying atrazine concentration. The best performance of plant was observed in phase-II. The atrazine (200 mg/L) having COD value 1356 mg/L was used with varying flow rate and 90.56% COD removal was obtained at a flow rate of 300 mL/h on 122th day of operation...

Short chain fatty acids (SCFA) and ketone bodies recently emerged as important physiological relevant metabolites because of their association with microbiota, immunology, obesity and other metabolic states. They were commonly analyzed by GC-MS with long run time and laborious sample preparation. In this study we developed a novel LC-MS/MS method using fast derivatization coupled with liquid-liquid extraction to detect SCFA and ketone bodies in plasma and feces. Several different derivatization reagents were evaluated to compare the efficiency, the sensitivity and chromatographic separation of structural isomers...

CEU Mass Mediator (CMM) is an on-line tool for aiding researchers when performing metabolite annotation. Its database is comprised of 279,318 real compounds integrated from several metabolomic databases including Human Metabolome Database (HMDB), KEGG and LipidMaps and 672,042 simulated compounds from MINE. In addition, CMM scores the annotations which matched the query parameters using 122 rules based on expert knowledge. This knowledge, obtained from the Centre for Metabolomics and Bioanalysis (CEMBIO) and from a literature review, enables CMM expert system to automatically extract evidence to support or refute the annotations by checking relationships among them...

BACKGROUND: The endogenous glucocorticosteroid cortisol (F) and its metabolite cortisone (E) are known to be involved in stress adaption and anti-inflammatory and immune regulatory effects. The ratios of F to E in the matrices serum, hair and saliva are different. The shift of this ratio by the enzyme activity of 11β-hydroxysteroid-dehydrogenase, which inactivates cortisol, was often discussed. The aim of our study was to calculate the contribution of the plasma protein binding (PPB) to this shift...

Gas chromatography (GC) hyphenated with nitrogen chemiluminescence detection (NCD) and quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (QTOFMS) was applied for the first time to the quantitative analysis of new psychoactive substances (NPS) in urine, based on the N-equimolar response of NCD. A method was developed and validated to estimate the concentrations of three metabolites of the common stimulant NPS α-pyrrolidinovalerophenone (α-PVP) in spiked urine samples, simulating an analysis having no authentic reference standards for the metabolites and using the parent drug instead for quantitative calibration...

Volatile fatty acids (VFAs) are a group of common metabolites and semiochemicals mediating information transfer between higher organisms and bacteria, either from microbiome or external environment. VFAs commonly occur among various insect orders. There are numerous studies exploring their influence on the behavior of different insect species. In relation to the papers published by J. E. McFarlane in 1985, we assessed the effects of formic, acetic, propionic, butyric and valeric acids on the spatial preference of the lesser mealworm ( Alphitobius diaperinus ), a common pest of stored food grain products and the poultry industry...

OBJECTIVES: To assess if morphine pharmacokinetics are different in children with Down syndrome when compared with children without Down syndrome. DESIGN: Prospective single-center study including subjects with Down syndrome undergoing cardiac surgery (neonate to 18 yr old) matched by age and cardiac lesion with non-Down syndrome controls. Subjects were placed on a postoperative morphine infusion that was adjusted as clinically necessary, and blood was sampled to measure morphine and its metabolites concentrations...

OBJECTIVE: Despite effective antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and durable viral suppression, many HIV-infected individuals still do not achieve CD4+ cell count (CD4) normalization. Vitamin D has immunoregulatory functions, including inducing the development of T cells, and higher levels may improve CD4 rebound. DESIGN: Longitudinal study of men from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study who virally suppressed following HAART initiation and had pre- and post-HAART 25[OH]D and 1,25[OH]2D measurements and repeated measures of CD4...

Obesity and associated metabolic co-morbidities are a worldwide public health problem. Negative health outcomes associated with obesity, however, do not arise from excessive adiposity alone. Rather, deleterious outcomes of adipose tissue accumulation are a result of how adipocytes are distributed to individual regions in the body. Due to our increased understanding of the dynamic relationship that exists between specific adipose depots and disease risk, an accurate characterization of total body adiposity as well as location is required to properly evaluate a population's disease risk...

Plant roots release complex mixtures of bioactive molecules including compounds that affect the activity and modify the composition of the rhizosphere microbiome. In this work, we investigated the initial phase of the interaction between tomato and an effective biocontrol strain of Trichoderma harzianum (T22). We found that root exudates (RE), obtained from plants grown in a split root system and exposed to a choice of biotic and abiotic stress factors (wounding, salt, pathogen attack), stimulate the growth and act as chemoattractants of the biocontrol fungus...

Multidrug resistance occurring during cancer chemotherapy is a major obstacle for effectiveness and response to therapy and is often caused by ATP-binding cassette (ABC) efflux transporters. Belonging to the family of ABC transporters, breast cancer resistance protein is getting more and more in the spotlight of research. As a strategy to overcome multidrug resistance, inhibitors of ABC transporters were synthesized, which could be applied in combination with cytostatic drugs. For this purpose, 2,4-disubstituted pyridopyrimidine derivatives were synthesized...

OBJECTIVE Gliomas are one of the most common types of primary brain tumors. Recent studies have supported the importance of key genetic alterations, including isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) mutations and 1p19q codeletion, in glioma prognosis. Mutant IDH produces 2-hydroxyglutarate from α-ketoglutarate, a key metabolite of the Krebs cycle. The mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (MPC) is composed of MPC1 and MPC2 subunits and is functionally essential for the Krebs cycle. The authors sought to explore the impact of MPC1 and MPC2 expression on patient prognosis...

Pathogenic fungi continue to develop resistance against current antifungal drugs. To explore the potential of agricultural waste products as a source of novel antifungal compounds, we obtained an unbiased GC-MS profile of 151 compounds from 16 commercial and experimental cultivars of feijoa peels. Multivariate analysis correlated 93% of the compound profile with antifungal bioactivity. Of 18 compounds that significantly correlated with antifungal activity, five had not previously been described from feijoa...

This study aimed to investigate the effect of prior LED sessions on the responses of cardiorespiratory parameters during the running incremental step test. Twenty-six healthy, physically active, young men, aged between 20 and 30 years, took part in this study. Participants performed two incremental load tests after placebo (PLA) and light-emitting diode application (LED), and had their gas exchange, heart rate (HR), blood lactate, and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) monitored during all tests. The PLA and LED conditions were compared using the dependent Student t test with significance set at 5%...

Sporadic inclusion body myositis (sIBM) is the most prevalent acquired muscle disorder in the elderly with no defined etiology or effective therapy. Endoplasmic reticulum stress and deposition of myostatin, a secreted negative regulator of muscle growth, have been implicated in disease pathology. The myostatin signaling pathway has emerged as a major target for symptomatic treatment of muscle atrophy. Here, we systematically analyzed the maturation and secretion of myostatin precursor MstnPP and its metabolites in a human muscle cell line...

Many countries with incidence of malaria, including those surrounding Maputo Bay, use dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) to reduce mosquitoes. This study is the first to estimate the human health risk associated with consumption of marine fish from Maputo Bay contaminated with DDTs. The median for ∑DDTs was 3.8 ng/g ww (maximum 280.9 ng/g ww). The overall hazard ratio for samples was 1.5 at the 75th percentile concentration and 28.2 at the 95th percentile. These calculations show increased potential cancer risks due to contamination by DDTs, data which will help policy makers perform a risk-benefit analysis of DDT use in malaria control programs in the region...

Rose-scented geranium (Pelargonium sp.) is widely known as aromatic and medicinal herb, accumulating specialized metabolites of high economic importance, such as essential oils, ascorbic acid, and tartaric acid. Ascorbic acid and tartaric acid are multifunctional metabolites of human value to be used as vital antioxidants and flavor enhancing agents in food products. No information is available related to the structural and functional properties of the enzymes involved in ascorbic acid and tartaric acid biosynthesis in rose-scented geranium...

Marine sponge holobionts harbor complex microbial communities whose members may be the true producers of secondary metabolites accumulated by sponges. Bromopyrrole alkaloids constitute a typical class of secondary metabolites isolated from sponges that very often display biological activities. Bromine incorporation into secondary metabolites can be catalyzed by either halogenases or haloperoxidases. The diversity of the metagenomes of sponge holobiont species containing bromopyrrole alkaloids (Agelas spp. and Tedania brasiliensis) as well as holobionts devoid of bromopyrrole alkaloids spanning in a vast biogeographic region (approx...